Friday, June 10, 2016

Brave Quilter - quilting with purpose

I have finally decided to join all of the #Bravequilters over at Pink Doxies for the month of June.

I have no pretty pictures to show because I have to post this right away so I don't back out. :)

My challenge for June will be to quilt with a purpose. I want to start quilting outside of a meander or a straight line. I want to do leaves and swirls and vines. Eventually I want to do dragonflies and daisies, but lets not get too crazy. :)

I will do some practice blocks, but I think I will set this goal to quilt a wall hanging or mini quilt of some kind so I can also work with the shapes in the quilt.

6 comments:

Good for you Jen! Brave Quilter has pushed me to try things I thought I never could. It'll work it's magic on you too. It's scary to do free motion quilting, but keep at it and it'll seem natural in no time. I see daisies and dragonflies in your future for sure. But baby steps first. Last month for Brave Quilter I took on the challenge of creating a quilting sampler. The challenge came at the end though, in being brave enough to show my quilting. Full of mistakes, but that's ok. I tried. And will try again.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with. No suggestions, some find circular quilting easier and some find straight line quilting easier...maybe if you play around on practise blocks first you will decide what to do on the mini.

I agree with Jennifer to try lots of easy things. Leah Day has loads of easy motifs to start with, and I found her videos invaluable when I started. Also, Pinterest, as I'm sure you're familiar, has a truckload of ideas. Set up a board for FMQ, and make a goal to practice a certain number every week. I found drawing designs on paper helped me, but I worked at using both hands and whole arm movement as I would under my machine. You might try shaving cream on a cookie sheet for lots of do-overs. Also, I found the biggest challenge I faced was how not to quilt myself into a corner. Learn techniques on how to back out if it happens. And lastly, sorry if it's TMI, but remember you can always run your stitching OFF the edge, and come back on. This is a wonderful technique for keeping the edges from becoming wavy, and makes adding your binding at the end a much easier job.

Thanks so much for linking up with #BraveQuilter, and I look forward to seeing what you work on.

Good luck with your June challenge! When I signed up for the first time last month I did not have any photos either - so I just threw in one a cute young ducklings! As to quilting - I really like Angela Walters who shows both longarm and domestiv quilting. Also remember that you CAN stop ...... I often forget this and end up where I don't want to be and then wondered why didn't I just stop and take a look!

this is completely awesome, Jen! You will master this in no time. I look at free-motion designs frequently on Pinterest to find simple, basic patterns I feel comfortable trying. There are many Celtic-type designs that look fantastic but are simple.

I love receiving comments from you. It makes my day. I try to respond to each and every comment via email. Unless of course you are a no-reply blogger because I don't have a way to respond to you, but I appreciate and read the comments just as much.I hope you have a wonderful day. Happy Quilting!